GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — Trinity Grand Haven Hospital workers are planning to strike next month over unfair labor practices, according to officials with Michigan’s largest healthcare union.
On July 21, SEIU Healthcare Michigan says workers at Trinity Grand Haven Hospital delivered a notice for an unfair labor practice strike for Friday, August 4.
The strike is planned to take place during Grand Haven’s annual Coast Guard Festival.
SEIU Healthcare Michigan says workers are protesting bad faith bargaining, low wages, repeated and illegal attempts to undermine their union, and a lack of community investment by Trinity Health.
After seven months at the bargaining table, the union says Trinity has “negotiated in bad faith and has failed to make an investment in the Grand Haven community by offering low wages to its employees.”
According to the union, workers say they picked August 4 as the date for the strike to build awareness of the role they play in providing care for the Coast Guard Festival.
The Coast Guard Festival brings more than 350,000 people to the area annually.
“We were told for many years that we were helping to keep healthcare in Grand Haven by being lower paid and that Trinity was going to solve all our problems. But Trinity continues to make wage proposals that are far lower than what our colleagues make down the road at the Trinity Muskegon Hospital. Low wages are resulting in recruiting and retention problems across our hospital, often forcing us to work short-staffed. Our community has invested in this hospital for decades and they expect better care. We are going on strike because it’s time for Trinity to invest in workers! We must restore this hospital to being the pillar of the community it once was,” said Beth Ruiter, Medical Technologist at Trinity Grand Haven.
Almost 200 North Ottawa Community Hospital workers voted to affiliate with SEIU last December after the hospital was acquired by Trinity and renamed Trinity Grand Haven Hospital.
“We were a free-standing community hospital for over 100 years before we were purchased by Trinity Health. We were able to operate because of the immense amount of support we received from the community. We have seen the quality of care become greatly challenged because of the staffing crisis. We want the community to know what’s happening inside the hospital and how focused we are on improving the quality of care and support our patients receive,” said Ricky Kauffman, Lead Radiographer at Trinity Grand Haven Hospital.
Back in May, around 200 hospital workers hosted an informational picket to protest low wages and staffing shortages at Trinity Grand Haven Hospital.
